Ludlow 38
Archive
Gerard Byrne (Dublin, born 1969) repeatedly uses newspapers and magazines as motifs and sources for his work. “They evidence aspirations and self-identities, all offered within the pluralism of the capitalist newsstand.” At Ludlow 38 he shows a work from an ongoing series of black-and-white photographic prints dedicated to this subject, which also interested photographers such as Walker Evans and John Vacheron. Byrne uses the newsstand as a temporal index: a moment in time portrayed in headlines and covers and reflecting on how the media industry’s representations form our sense of the present. The title remains unfixed. “One year, nine months, three weeks and one day ago” denotes the time elapsed between the shooting and the display of the image. Only one print is made from each negative, and the temporal relationship between the image and the date it chronicles therefore becomes materially inscribed in the photograph.
